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Let towns invoke home rule

Despite Gov. Andrew Cuomo's claims that New York is open for business, the upstate exodus continues: young job-seekers and retirees leave, while the older and poorer remain.

High taxes, state mandates and hyper-regulation impel people to make the rational decision to flee New York. Upstate has been declining for over 40 years. Governors from Nelson Rockefeller to the latest Cuomo have falsely promised to restore upstate's prosperity. Cuomo has further strangled upstate by banning fracking, thereby killing 20,000 jobs and $1 billion of potential investment.

The power in New York resides in the Albany-Manhattan axis (New York City and its suburbs, and their allies upstate.) Mostly they're indifferent to us; sometimes they're hostile. They won't help us.

The Declaration of Independence, which informs the federal and every state constitution, states: "That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it."

It's clear that the Albany government has been destructive to our ends. Our ends are simple: to make upstate a place where our children find work, where seniors can retire to enjoy the company of their children and grandchildren who choose to make this their home.

Could our salvation be in the state constitution's Article IX, about home rule? Article IX grants local governments considerable power. The state Court of Appeals recently empowered the Town of Dryden to outlaw gas development, vaulting existing state law. Doesn't this empower local governments to permit fracking, and perhaps even more?

People are fed up. A recent Siena College poll found that New Yorkers trust local government far more than Albany, upstaters even more so.

The Upstate New York Association of Towns is studying business costs and taxes in New York versus Pennsylvania. They're also looking at the state Legislature to see if it's biased against upstate. Pending the results of their study, the association is considering several options to separate upstate from downstate, including secession (partitioning upstate from down and joining Pennsylvania.)

Invoking Article IX (home rule) may be a better way to go. We've already said "no" to two of Albany's destructive policies.

When Gov. Eliot Spitzer ordered county clerks to issue driver's licenses to illegal aliens in 2007, the clerks refused. When Andrew Cuomo crammed the SAFE Act down our throats, sheriffs defied him by selectively enforcing it. This is home rule at its best and government as it should be: elected officials closest to the people who valiantly represent them against an oppressive, indifferent and distant government.

Downstate insists we commit slow suicide, but we need not comply.

Chief Justice John Marshall said, "The people made the Constitution and the people can unmake it. It is a creature of their will, and lives only by their will."